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Fall
2004
Dave Johnson has a 38-footer that he keeps near his home in Newport, Rhode Island. He loves his boat—she’s shined up, cleaned out, and packed full of all the electronics needed to cruise New England’s fickle waters. Once in a while, though, Johnson gets a hankering to do a little boating outside his local haunts. He especially dreams of checking out Seattle, of tying up and then climbing up to the top of the Space Needle.
Sam Smith happens to live out that way. He has a 42-footer that’s just as tricked out as Johnson’s powerboat, and like his fellow skipper out East, he, too, likes to imagine cruising the opposite coast. Funny, but the New Englander’s hometown of Newport is a place the Seattle native has always wanted to visit by boat. He’s just never found a way to get the trip done.
These two guys don’t really exist, but we here at Voyaging are pretty sure there are plenty of boaters out there just like them who are as real as the rising tide. We created Johnson and Smith to suggest the idea of a boat swap, which we think has just as much potential as the house swaps that go on every day around the world. Plenty of people swap houses to take vacations without having to fork over cash for hotel rooms. We’d like to hear from all you readers interested in doing the same with your boats—and we’d like this page to be the place you come to find others interested in doing the exact same thing.
We ran the concept by some insurance experts who say boat swaps can easily be done with a policy rider that costs pennies compared with what most of us spend on accommodations during vacations.
Check with your agent, of course, but when you get the green light, send a note about your ideal swap—number of cabins, part of the country, size and style of boat, etc.—to eileen.mansfield@primedia.com, along with a photo of your boat. We’ll list what we get in an upcoming issue along with a full profile of at least one boat and owner.
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